SELWESKI: Lawmakers reject tea party, take a cup of courage

Will Thursday, June 13, 2013, be marked by history as a turning point, when Republicans in the state Legislature finally broke free from the ideological chains of the tea party and extremist right-wing groups?

The 76-31 House vote in favor of Medicaid expansion — representing a surprising turnaround from the doctrinaire GOP opposition of recent months — may mark a welcome Michigan milestone. Despite an intense grassroots campaign against the plan, the House voted overwhelmingly to approve the “Michigan Healthy Plan” put forward by Republican Gov. Rick Snyder.

It appears that many House Republicans got over their knee-jerk reaction against a state-by-state Medicaid program advocated by President Obama. They studied the issue, saw its advantages, appreciated the medical benefits that will come to nearly a half million Michigan residents (mostly kids) and, after swallowing hard, voted for it. Obviously, the fact that the feds are paying for the Medicaid upgrade was pretty difficult to turn down.

In the end, this was a case of common sense trumping core conservative rigidity.

Advertisement

One Republican lawmaker remarked, apparently with a bit of amazement, that it made sense to vote for the bill “after you spend time on this issue … and really look at the issue.”

In the run-up to this key vote, tea party groups warned that Republican lawmakers who voted for “bringing Obamacare to Michigan” would face a GOP primary challenger in 2014. These fringies (my word) said anyone who voted for greater Medicaid eligibility would be labeled a RINO (Republican In Name Only) and branded as a traitor to the small-government cause.

These firebrands then fired off a highly publicized letter to Snyder saying that any true patriot should not support his re-election after he “stuck a finger in the eye of his own conservative base.”

Based on the lopsided vote on Thursday, and an apparent agreement that Senate Republicans will follow the House’s lead, it seems fairly obvious that the correspondence backfired.

After all, Republican legislators know that moderate voters who view Snyder as a mainstream governor will certainly dismiss the letter as a diatribe by irrational Obama haters. The 25 tea party activists who signed the letter wrote that Medicaid expansion is a proposal by “the most destructive American president of our history as a nation.”

This is the same president who was just elected eight months ago by a 5 million-vote margin nationwide.

What’s more, Medicaid for the uninsured working poor who make wages slightly above the poverty level was endorsed by CEOs of every Michigan hospital, the Michigan Chamber of Commerce, the Michigan Nurses Association and the Small Business Association of Michigan.

Even GOP governors far to the right of Snyder, such as Rick Scott of Florida, John Kasich of Ohio and Jan Brewer of Arizona support an extension of Medicaid eligibility in their states.

It was almost as if these harsh critics of Obamacare had experienced an epiphany. Brewer, a darling of tea party activists, has drawn a line in the sand. She vows to veto every piece of legislation sent to her by the Republican-controlled Arizona Legislature until they approve Medicaid reform.

Perhaps Brewer and other conservative officials are realizing that some of the fringe positions the tea party embraces have no place in day-to-day government operations, where practical problem-solving is needed.

And perhaps the hyperventilating tea party leaders are baffled, if not disillusioned, by the swirling currents in American politics, with numerous elected officials crossing party lines or teaming up with ideological opposites on issues such as Common Core Standards for K-12 education, drone strikes against al-Qaida leadership, expanded background checks for gun purchases, arming the rebels in war-torn Syria and, most significantly, supporting the broad-powers approach taken by the NSA spying program.

Imagine that — politicians thinking for themselves and addressing issues one by one rather than marching in lock step to party dictates or ideological bullying.

Once Snyder signs into law the expansion of Medicaid for those within 133 percent of the poverty line — households earning about $15,000 a year or less — I suspect the Republicans who, until now, until Thursday, kowtowed to the fringe elements within the GOP will come to regret another vote.

Their strident, anti-Obama-inspired opposition to creating a state-run health care exchange — an online marketplace — for the uninsured to shop for medical coverage accomplished nothing except to put the feds in charge of the Michigan process.

Perhaps the strangest aspect of the story of the Michigan Legislature’s wooing of the far right over the past 2 ˝ years is that Republican lawmakers need not fear election defeat. The gerrymandered legislative districts shamelessly drawn by their party virtually guarantee incumbents a victory in a November election.

As for the threat of a primary challenge, that prospect derives more from political paranoia than raw reality. In part because of term limits and an incestuous, wait-your-turn approach to legislative seats, the intraparty competition in Michigan primary elections is disturbingly weak.

Incredibly, the 1986 win by GOP Rep. Doug Carl over Sen. Kirby Holmes, a Shelby Township-based slugfest that was incredibly nasty, even by Macomb County standards, apparently still stands as the last time in Michigan that an incumbent Republican state representative defeated an incumbent Republican state senator in a Senate primary.

Some of the 28 House Republicans who voted for the Medicaid bill on Thursday nervously offered information about fig leaf provisions in the legislation and convoluted explanations about their vote. Others came right to the point.

House Speaker Jase Bolger essentially conceded that he had come around to the governor’s point of view, that the Medicaid deal with the feds was simply good public policy.

Thursday’s vote was about “seizing an opportunity to improve the overall health of people in Michigan,” Bolger said, and it represented “a great example of cooperation in Lansing leading to the resolution of a difficult issue in a way that keeps the focus on the people of Michigan and what they need.”

After the House vote, a number of Democrats took to the podium to praise their Republican colleagues for breaking the tea party’s grip and voting their conscience.

GOP Rep. Mike Shirkey of Clark Lake admitted he was a “hard ‘no’ ” on the bill when the legislative process began. But he said during the House debate that there are “perfectly good, legitimate philosophical reasons to oppose, but a sincere effort to analyze the other sound, definable and measurable reasons to support outweighed those.”

What a breakthrough. Practical solutions over petty partisanship.

It’s uplifting to see that our lawmakers rejected a cup of tea in favor of a cup of courage.